The continued development of terrain which is subject to flooding has heightened the need for temporary flood control barriers which may be easily transported, quickly erected at the desired site and then disassembled when the need for flood protection is relieved. High-yield crop land, for example, is typically found in the floodplains of significant rivers of the world. Although a substantial amount of such crop land is normally protected from flooding by permanent earth dikes or levees, such levees are often inadequate and are subsequently breached causing flooding of large areas of land which has various kinds of development thereon including residential and commercial structures, roadways, railroads, and virtually all forms of civilian development. Such development also takes place in flood prone areas which are not protected from flooding by permanent dikes or levees.
The time available to provide at least temporary flood. protection for structural developments in flood prone areas may range from hours to several days. For example, during the severe flooding of the Mississippi River floodplains in July, 1993 predicted flood levels or "crests", particularly downstream of the source of flooding, were available several days prior to the critical flood period. In this case, attempts to protect many structures in floodplain areas behind the threatened levees or dikes were unsuccessful in that sand bag barriers or temporary earthen dikes or levees were quickly breached once the flood waters impinged on these structures. However, the permanent earthen levees or dikes were, in many cases, topped by the rising flood waters and efforts to increase the height of these levees using wooden planks, sandbags, or temporary sand or earth fill were largely unsuccessfully. Moreover, the erection of sandbag and earthfill barriers are labor and equipment intensive and time consuming and such structures can rapidly become saturated and structurally weakened to the point of failure. Still further, they create a problem with respect to removal after the flood-waters have subsided.
Accordingly, the aforementioned continued development of floodplain and other flood prone areas has created a need for temporary flood control barriers which are easily transported and erected, are not subject to structural weakening from water saturation, are not particularly labor or equipment intensive, and may be removed and reused when needed. It is to these ends that the present invention has been developed.